


folie à plusieurs

by braingunk



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Atmosphere Focused, Character Study, Gen, Immediately Post Episode, It's a study on Gotham city basically, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s05e12 The Beginning..., location study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 13:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19746475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braingunk/pseuds/braingunk
Summary: “Gotham grows on you”, its residents will tell you dryly. They couldn’t tell you how, or why, but it grows on you.(A study of Gotham City and the people who live there.)





	folie à plusieurs

**Author's Note:**

> A folie à deux (French for "the madness of two") is a rare psychiatric syndrome shared by two people. The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à plusieurs ("madness of several").

“Gotham grows on you”, its residents will tell you dryly. They couldn’t tell you how, or why, but it grows on you. 

It seems unlikely to an outsider. The sky over the city always seems grey and at night the stars are choked out by years of light pollution and smog. The people here are quick to anger and quicker to distrust you. Even now, before the Bat, so many strange things happen each day that you’d struggle to understand just what the appeal is.

The kids here grow up much too fast, taught how to stop crying during a bank holdup when they’re months old, taught not to ask questions as soon as they speak, taught to run from gunshots as soon as their legs will let them. 

Being wealthy has many perks, the ability to keep one’s children sheltered from much of the violence on Gotham’s streets is among them. The elite of Gotham send their children to the old school at the edge of the city. It is possibly the safest place in the city, as the rich spend more on mafia protection for their children than on tuition fees each year. The building, which was once white, has been stained grey by years of smog and grime. The children who grow up poor are not so lucky. They laugh and chatter as they walk to school, looking over their shoulders and cutting down alleys whenever an unfamiliar car drives too slowly behind them. They look haunted when they’re quiet for too long, and learn to compartmentalise early on. The street kids are perhaps the unluckiest of the lot, perpetually on edge and watching over their shoulders for someone who might mean them harm. It’s not paranoia, really. Not if it’s the thing that keeps them alive. In the years to come, as Gotham’s night life gets stranger and even more deadly, their fear of what’s out there at night will be even more crucial for survival.

Selina Kyle is a street kid. Even now that she’s technically an adult (and has long since been the responsible adult in her own life), she’s still a street kid. The claws and new wealth can’t change the way that the city has shaped her inability to completely let her guard down, even in her carefully chosen apartment well out of reach of the kind of people she’d once been so cautious of.

Bruce Wayne is not like others of his class. He may have once had the luxury of a sheltered childhood, but The Tragedy cut that short. The Tragedy is not only the defining moment in Bruce’s young life, but a key part of Gotham’s history. The blue blood that soaked into the concrete in Crime Alley is part of what makes Gotham, Gotham. 

Bruce Wayne  _ is _ like others of his class, in that he learns to use masks to reach his ends. 

Haly’s Circus has not yet returned to Gotham. But it will. Despite the role it played in bringing a monster to Gotham years ago, it will come back. None of the employees will understand why, or even want to return, but they won’t try to stop it. Because although it may travel away, Haly’s is bound to Gotham by blood. When it brings the first of Bruce’s children to him, Gothamites won’t really consider, beyond a dull feeling of horror, that they’re letting a child defend them. Because children on the streets of Gotham are hardly new, and really, they’d rather it was Robin than them. 

But at present, there is no Robin. There is barely a Bat, beyond the plotting of two criminals, the bat-shaped blade buried in the hand of a madman, and the glimpse of  _ something _ the police commissioner thought he saw through a green chemical haze. 

There’s a saying you might hear: “Only in Gotham.” 

For a long time, it has been a half-joke amongst the city’s people. Only in Gotham would such a ridiculous sex scandal that blazes the newspaper headlines for a week be completely true. Only in Gotham do you get so many politicians and policemen and philanthropists dealing with the mafia. Only in Gotham would a man kill people using weather balloons. 

As the years go on, the joke becomes a weary, defeated sigh. Only in Gotham would a man commit murders using hypnosis as a weapon. Only in Gotham would a man in a glittering green suit leave a trail of clues to solve his own crimes. Only in Gotham does a man come back from the dead and staple his own face back on. It’s an admission that what happens here isn’t normal or sane or should even be possible. It’s also a point of pride on some level, that these things could only happen in this city (“ _ our _ city”, the people will say to one another). 

These events will only continue to escalate in the years to come. In the future, some will say it’s because of the Bat. Others will say that the city is cursed and build on blood and tragedy. Perhaps it’s both. 

For the citizens of Gotham, when they finally understand that the Bat is real, their response will simply be to say “Only in Gotham,” because there will be nothing else they can do. They can’t leave. They can never bring themselves to leave.

There is a constant feeling of apathy that lingers in the smog in the city. It affects even the righteous James Gordon as the years go on, turning his view of morality grey along with his lungs. For the average person, it manifests in locking their doors early at night and not making eye contact with strangers. For a smaller number, it leaves them itching to follow the next person to cause chaos, and bask for a moment in the second hand glory of  _ actually doing something _ . Then, when the G.C.P.D. show up, they will disperse back into the masses of grey faces moving about the morning rush of traffic. Even all these years later, there are balls of red, black and white clothing wrapped around half-used packs of face paint stuffed in the bottom of wardrobes, left there by people hoping that they might relive Jerome Valeska’s carnival. 

Many of those clothes will rot away as their owners who joined gangs when the bridges fell don’t survive the months trapped on the island. 

A lot of people don’t survive the months trapped on the island. 

There is, for several years, a divide in the population of Gotham between those who fled before the bridges fell and those who were trapped on the island. Those who stayed were left to fester in whatever dark corner they could find to lurk in, or hide from the ones who weren’t afraid to hurt people. Their fear lingers in the bricks in the once abandoned buildings long after the city is rebuilt, but they know the city intimately and look ready to get up and disappear into the night at a moment’s notice. They don’t trust the outside world who never came to help. The ones who made it out are more afraid of Gotham than ever, now that they’ve had the chance to really understand that the city is so  _ wrong _ on some level. They lock themselves in as a secure a location as they can manage and wonder why they even came back. 

As a decade passes since the bridges go down, and the divide lessens. As the city is rebuilt, the ones who stayed feel their understanding of Gotham fade. The ones who came back stop wondering why they don’t leave again (because Gotham grows on you, as they might tell you). 

The only part of the city which doesn’t seem to change, no matter how much money Wayne Enterprises funnels into it or how many times it or the city is taken over by malevolent forces, is Arkham Asylum. Arkham sits at the very edge of Gotham, peering at the rest of the city from over its gate, and does not change. The terror of the inmates and staff is a stink that hangs heavier in the air the deeper into the belly of the building you go. That sort of thing doesn’t just go away. 

Plans are written up for reforming Arkham time and time again, but never quite go through. Much like Haly’s Circus, Arkham still has a role to play. It’s where minds are left to fester. One of those minds, belonging to a man that isn’t quite Jeremiah Valeska anymore, is well on it’s way to taking on a role that’s almost as crucial to the city as the Bat’s. He’s already familiar with the padded cell they put him in after a decade. It will be his home, and the home of the monster he hasn’t completely become yet. In the future when the Bat throws him in there time and time again, the unchanging Arkham will have his cell prepared, never expecting the man to be rehabilitated. 

None of the monsters the Bat will face will ever be expected to be rehabilitated. It is, perhaps, one of the few things that seems unlikely in Gotham. Not impossible, granted, but so deeply  _ wrong _ for a place like Arkham that nobody will ever get their hopes up. 

At present, most of the Bat’s future foes are prowling the streets and sewers of the city. Many of them feel like they’re waiting for something. Perhaps they can feel the city’s anticipation for the arrival of the Bat. Perhaps they’re just waiting for the train, running late as always. That’s the nature of Gotham; it always keeps you guessing. You can never be sure what’s pure superstition and what’s an instinctual feel for the emotions in the air around you.

Then again, living in Gotham in the first place requires people to ignore their instincts to a certain degree until they adjust to the constant underlying fear that permeates the city. This might be what they mean when they say Gotham grows on you.

Gotham’s people may leave, but all return home in one way or another. Because it  _ is _ their home. It just also happens to be the home of chaos and blood and the Bat. The chaos takes many shapes; it is in the hearts of those who were in Indian Hill and seem not quite human, and in the minds of clowns. The blood is everywhere. It is not just in the actions of murderers in vibrant suits or pig masks, but also in corrupt officers and the walls of Arkham and the hands of the wealthy who are content to let it happen so long as they still live in luxury. Blue blood runs in Crime Alley, and red blood runs everywhere. 

When he is known by the people, the Bat will be everywhere too. They will see him in every dark corner of the city and this will make many of them feel safe. It doesn’t really matter where he really is, or who is under the mask. The Bat will watch over the city and that will be enough for the average Gothamite. Criminals will spend sleepless nights pondering who is under the mask and if he will catch them and throw them into Blackgate Penitentiary. 

The man who will become the Clown thinks about the Bat. This is the first night he does so, but it will not be the last. He pulls the bandages off his hand and studies the hole left there by the Bat’s weapon. This is the first injury the Bat gives him, but it will not be the last. The man knows this, understands that they are bound together, and looks forward to what’s to come.

Jerome Valeska was a pioneer in what madness could do in a city like Gotham. His brother pushed the boundaries and pushed the city to destruction. The Clown will push further, until the acidic taste of chemicals and insanity become a part of the air in Gotham. The Bat will try and stop him, and the people will learn to view the caped crusader as a pillar of sanity and order in the city. This will cause dismay for much of the police force. This will also cause confusion for the outside world, who won’t understand what’s so sane about a man in a bat costume throwing himself off rooftops and into fights. 

(Only in Gotham.)

The rules of logic don’t seem to apply in Gotham, nor do the laws of physics most of the time. Gothamites will joke about how you need to be a little crazy to work at Arkham, but will tactfully ignore the fact that you need to be a little crazy to live in a city that’s so fundamentally  _ wrong _ in the first place. This will become harder to ignore as the years go on, and the Bat and his rogues grow more and more prominent. Still, they will not leave, because Gotham grows on you. 

Gotham grows on the people who inhabit it like a fungus. Their view of the world will narrow to the city, because the city becomes their world. Time spent in other places feels surreal to Gothamites, as if the mundane and safe is suddenly the strangest thing. 

This is for the best, really. Gotham is its own world and that means that the mayhem stays contained there. Criminals may drift away to other cities for a time, but they never go far and always come home. This is something Oswald Cobblepot knows intimately. He could never abandon Gotham. He likes to think that this is a choice he makes rather than that there is something about the city that keeps people there. He’s a busy man, and doesn’t have time for questions about free will. He needs to rebuild an empire and deal with the Bat, who he does not yet know as  _ the Bat _ . At least his company is good, he thinks as he looks across the room at Edward Nygma. 

Gotham is in Nygma’s veins too. He has his own version of the saying: ‘ _ that is  _ so _ Gotham’ _ . It lacks the defeated tone of the original, and all that’s left is the pride in the mayhem that takes place. Gotham is a sprawling, chaotic puzzle, and Nygma  _ loves _ puzzles. 

Tonight, though, he questions the new puzzle that will haunt him for years to come:  _ Who is the Bat? _ It doesn’t occur to him that the two are irrevocably linked.

He is not alone in his questioning. A young man sits in a manor across the river staring down at the cowl in his hands. The manor is newly rebuilt, but somehow already seems to have been there forever. The young man doesn’t know how it can already smell faintly musty, but this is the way that the city needs the manor to be, and so that is how it shall be. Old fashioned decadence sticks to the large rooms of Wayne Manor like fear sticks to Arkham, no matter how homely the butler may try to make it.

The young man turns to him and asks if he thinks he’s doing the right thing. The butler nods solemnly. The young man doesn’t let go of the cowl. 

Deep in Arkham Asylum, the man who will become the Clown doesn’t question  _ who is the Bat _ , because he already knows. The Bat is his everything. 

In the gloom of the night, the air hangs still and heavy like an unbroken storm over the city. It’s the feeling a city on the brink of upheaval, the moment of anticipation before the first domino falls. It will not be the first or last time the city undergoes a drastic change, but it will arguably be its most crucial. The arrival of the Bat is decades -centuries- in the making. The chaos that bubbles just below the tarmac grows more erratic and violent each year. The city shapes itself to be the perfect playground for its favourite son, returned after ten long years away.

But for now, on this night, Gotham is as quiet as it can be. Cars cruise to dubious venues as law abiding citizens duck their heads out of sight and try to sleep. Thunder rumbles in the distance. It is not a peaceful night, but it’s as close to peaceful as the city gets. There is something undeniably beautiful about the dark skyline of mismatched architecture back-lit by street lamps and light pollution.

“Gotham grows on you,” they say, and in some inexplicable way, it’s understandable why. 

**Author's Note:**

> I had fun creating the atmosphere for this piece, and I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, maybe drop me a comment so I know to keep writing weird studies like this? Also, maybe read my other fic Undisclosed Desires? It has a similar vibe, I think. Thanks for reading! :D


End file.
